Michael Portillo confronts a detachment of Gurkhas, produces a fine heritage cheese and discovers a monster cracker, which is key to making plastic.

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Michael Portillo’s journey finds him in York, a paradise for rail enthusiasts. He discovers the gardens at Harlow Carr in Harrogate and checks into the headquarters of Yorkshire Tea.

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Michael Portillo’s postwar journey from Merseyside to Teesside resumes at Brayford Pool in Lincoln, where England’s oldest canal, the Fossdyke, meets the city of Lincoln.

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Michael Portillo reaches the jet age in the Derby suburb of Peartree, where he tours the engineering colossus Rolls-Royce.

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Michael Portillo twists and shouts through postwar Liverpool, visiting the strikingly contemporary Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral and visits the former home of artist and poet Adrian Henri.

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Michael’s rail journey through post-war Scotland takes him over the River Tay to Dundee on the trail of Joseph McKenzie, the father of modern Scottish photography.

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At the former Midlothian mining village of Newtongrange, Michael meets the son of a miner whose name loomed large in the disputes of the 1970s and 1980s, 'Red' Mick McGahey.

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Michael Portillo continues his postwar Scottish railway adventure, this time from Glasgow to the capital, Edinburgh.

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At the home of Scottish football, Glasgow’s Hampden Park stadium, Michael admires the oldest football trophy in the world and hears how the 'passing game' was born there.

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Michael Portillo boards the West Highland Line to begin a railway journey across Scotland’s central belt, from the Arrochar Alps to the Loch of the Lowes.

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Michael goes on a tour around Heathrow Airport, taking an eerie walk around the mothballed Terminal 1 building and ending up atop the iconic 87.5 metre control tower.

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Michael Portillo reaches Havant, where the Scalextric factory was located, and Haslemere, the surprise birthplace of a musical phenomenon: the plastic recorder.

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Michael Portillo reaches England’s south coast to continue his exploration of postwar Britain, beginning on the steam-powered Swanage Railway in Dorset.

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Michael Portillo joins Navy Wings pilots for a spectacular close formation flight in the skies over Royal Naval Air Station Yeovilton and visits the magnificent Elizabethan mansion of Longleat.

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Beginning at London Marylebone, the last great Victorian railway terminus to be built in the capital, Michael Portillo embarks on a postwar exploration of Britain’s southern counties.

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